'Birth control not abstinence' stemming teen pregnancy

Declining teenage pregnancy rates in the US are due to better use of contraception, not abstinence, according to a new study.

Researchers found that just 14% of the drop in conception among 15 to 19-year-old girls since 1995 had been because they had avoided sex.

Some 86% of the decrease was because of improved use of contraception such as birth control pills and condoms.

Pregnancy rates for that age group fell by 27% between 1991 and 2000.

The US government has come under fire for promoting abstinence as its primary message to teenagers on preventing unwanted pregnancies. To obtain funding, "abstinence-only" education programmes must promote abstinence outside of marriage as their "exclusive purpose" and cannot advocate using contraception.

Hollywood starlet Scarlett Johansson has been among President George Bush's critics on the issue, saying recently that if he had his way, American women would be completely uneducated about sex and would each have six children.

In Britain the Independent Advisory Group on Teenage Pregnancy, which advises the Government, welcomed the study from Columbia University and sex education research centre the Guttmacher Institute.

The group's chairwoman, Gill Frances, said: "This confirms that we are on the right track in this country, that providing young people with good information, advice and contraceptive services, is the way to reduce teenage pregnancy.

"It is a myth that abstinence is a better approach and this US study confirms it.

"We must keep our focus and ensure that young people have good access to local contraceptive services.

"Teenage pregnancy rates are coming down in many areas, but we need to make sure all local authorities are doing equally well."

England's teenage pregnancy rate is at its lowest for 20 years.

The researchers studied data from a household survey of teenage girls conducted in 1995 and 2002 for an article published in the American Journal of Public Health.

They found that among those aged 15 to 17, 77% of pregnancy decline was attributable to improved contraceptive use and 23% to reduced sexual activity.

Johansson, who has revealed she gets tested for HIV every month, told Cosmopolitan magazine this month: "We are supposed to be liberated in America but if our president had his way, we wouldn't be educated about sex at all.

"Every woman would have six children and we wouldn't be able to have abortions."